I went back to page 85 which has Zito build, is that the one you run -with Staff support? Trying to see it with 2xxx Toughness.

I'm using This build currently, and I swap points in and out here as I play around and try to find more things to do with it.

The empty utility slot phases between Decoy (which I push instantly as a stun break) and Blink which I'm supposed to be doing that with but I have stupid brain-lag and definitely not using it to its potential to save me. I need to work on this.

In WvW, if I'm roaming as a striker/scout, that elite is Moa. If I'm going 1v3 or 1v4, it drops that down to more managable odds for awhile. If I'm harassing a well guarded point, or (in the case of the other night) running in to certain death just to hold a dead point from flipping over as long as I can, I swap it for Mass Invis as something to buy me a few seconds before my cooldowns come back up again. If I'm with the zerg for whatever reason (Psh, my talent is so wasted there), that's the only time I run Time Warp in WvW.

The points themselves are toss arounds. I personally like this build, but I'm constantly tweaking which traits I want and which ones I should swap out, and I encourage everyone that runs it to do the same. If something's not working for you, get rid of it.

I think I spent 3g on switching my spec because of the nerfs and everything else being broken.

Focus is junk
Torch is junk
Staff is junk for my support build I was running (That longer cd kills everything)
Scepter is junk.
Phantasms are a joke in PvE since they instantly die and signet doesn't increase their health till 3 seconds after they spawn but they die before then
shattering is a joke
mantras are a joke

The only thing left is GS and sword

/sigh

I'm out of builds...

I spent tolds of gold on my support build buying + duration runes, wasted 300 tokens for runes and knights gear because it supported my crit support build.

Now its gone, gold wasted and now I have to regear.

Karma isn't an option because karma cloth gear is junk, there is no customization in those pieces of gear, most of them are just crap condition damage. The only way for me to gear up is crafting and dungeons and dungeon gear is just like orr :/

Zito... you just cease to disappoint me with your nearsightedness, the staff nerf (although saddening) is kinda needed, the fact i can throw down chaos storms in the middle of a cap point in PvP and be able to keep any bunker off there and eventually cap it from underneath them is kinda ridiculous...

However, they did buff staff by making it so you can use your armor more so that kinda counteracts it, and due to how amazingly powerful phantasams are it makes sense (and i was awaiting) the nerf on them, especially since they can completely devastate people!!

Originally Posted by draykorinee

Youre in the mmo forums and you find mmos boring, Im heading on over to the twilight forums to add my unecessary and shallow 2 cents.

Dot's cant crit but crits can Dot (Sharper Images) :P Also you need to go into the condition (illusions) and healing (inspiration) lines if you want to get the glamour utility traits if you're building for support (illusions for blinding on the glamour area and inspiration for longer glamours and shorter cds). Maybe that's what they were thinking with that combo of stats, dunno

My fav skill calculator is gone and forced to use gw2 gurus since its really the only one left that is good.

Anything the highlight of this build are 2 things. Status conditions and reflect.

The reflect part comes from the offhand focus. Curtain and warden both reflect along with feedback. However in terms of usefulness it goes feedback > curtain > warden.

Warden has become mostly crap but has it's moments, its main problem is dying... really fast it has less hp then clones and signet of illusions doesn't make it better thanks to the signet bug (where the increase to hp does not apply till 3 seconds after the phantasm is summoned. However when it is alive it'll provide a nice 5 sec immune to range attacks. The other downside to it is its a 14 sec recharge and phantasmal haste is shit now and not worth wasted 20 points.

Next useful is curtain. It creates a wall that reflects projectiles. Good right? Well not really, its range is small and when I say range I mean its height. The only time it will reflect range attacks is when a standard, no taller then a norn, size npc attacks. Anything that is bigger (like golems in CoE) the reflect will not work and the projectile will go right threw the curtain.

The most useful is feedback, its a giant bubble, so height isn't an issue like curtain so it can reflect golems. This is your best life saver right here.

Now that the reflect part is out of the way now we get to the juicy bits. The main focus of this build is crippling dissipation and debilitating dissipation. Crippling is good, it slows enemys a lot allowing range to kite better and melee to escape better, debilitating dissipation provides either a bleed stack, weaken stack, or vulnerabilitie stack. You mainly want the weaken and vul as bleed will be useless for you.

Now you are probably saying "well my clones need to die for this to work". Well not really, there is a bug (and I am going to assume its a bug) where overwriting your clones with another clone counts as "clone death" allowing these 2 traits to trigger. Combined with a high crit chance, critical infusion and deceptive evasion you can pretty much keep clones rolling out every second keeping constant weakens, vul and cripples up. Now another bug is +condition duration does not effect crippling dissipation but it will work with every other condition.

Now what weapons to use? The choices are between GS, staff, and scepter/focus. Your main is going to be GS. No if's ands or buts. Reason is because GS has more clone generation then any of them here is why: GS attacks 3 times in 1.5 seconds. That is 3 chances to crit, which procs critical infusion which results in more dodge clones. Not to mention it's clone generating move with also provides might and vul is on a 6 sec cd. Scepter is slow.... SLOOOOOWWWWWWW like too slow, itll take about 4 seconds to get attack 3 finished to summon that clone that is if you don't interrupt its chain with another move (which you will be doing a lot) making scepter just a carrior for focuses reflects.

Now that GS is the main now it is between focus (lolscepter) and staff. Both bring differnt things to the table. Focus and scepter provide half baked reflects and staff provides buffs for the group and some conditions. Staff isn't that amazing (and recently nerfed it is still not). Medicore damage but at least winds of chaos provide fury and might. Chaos armor requires you to get hit the back teleport gets snagged on invisible ground particles.

Chaos storm is ok. It will apply poison, which in PvE basically does nothing has mobs don't tend to heal enough, daze which bosses are immune to but good on trash, weakness which is the strongest point and chill. For some reason chill in pve is only useful for the slow I never noticed chills +recharge time actually do anything for mobs in PvE. The boons are ok. Retaliation isn't all that great, swiftness is meh since you don't want to leave chaos storm and is reduced in combat. The only worth boon is aegis which is good however stacks in duration so it'll overwrite the first one which can suck if its right before you get hit but if you do get hit in time before another aegis appears on you it is awesome however it is random RNG.

So both focus and staff has it's ups and downs pick your preference. If you go with staff drop the 20 points in inspiration, put 10 in chaos and 10 in domination for +staff reduced cd and domination is just for the +10% condition duration.

Equipment is a preference. I choose 2 runes of lysaa and 4 runes of lich for +20% condition duration and the sigil I choose 30% on crit for freezing as it is an extra slow.

You want to be stacking Precision and power (regardless if you have staff or not because staff is a secondary support weapon like scepter/focus) and toughness. Reason I say toughness is because there is no precision/power/vitality gear.

Zito... you just cease to disappoint me with your nearsightedness, the staff nerf (although saddening) is kinda needed, the fact i can throw down chaos storms in the middle of a cap point in PvP and be able to keep any bunker off there and eventually cap it from underneath them is kinda ridiculous...

However, they did buff staff by making it so you can use your armor more so that kinda counteracts it, and due to how amazingly powerful phantasams are it makes sense (and i was awaiting) the nerf on them, especially since they can completely devastate people!!

Durz, uhh, they didn't nerf staff. They nerfed Chaos Storm (the only non-target restricted AoE Mesmers have), and pretty much all Phantasms (except Berserker, which kills itself often enough?).

Phantasm builds are no longer allowed to have momentum, to build up steam. Except they weren't buffed and limited to one, they still shatter or die in a single hit, but are expected to carry how much of our offensive pressure, but now they're pushing it as if they want it to take a minute or more before a Mesmer can reach their full damage potential (assuming some Phantasms live longer than one attack cycle).

Chaos Storm as a Point Cap is mediocre damage, but moderate levels of mitigating conditions at work. Staff doesn't have the knockback of Greatsword, or any of the deniability of a Guardian (who literally can find how many ways to say GTFO), area coverage like a well necro (with actual condition damage).

If people stand in Chaos Storm, they take damage and weakness and whatever else. If they move off to the side they can still cap a point (and are even free to decide which dorection they go, unlike Guardians), and keep doing damage. Shucks, you can't reach the Mesmer dancing in the middle? Pull out your ranged weapon and smack her hard. Same with a Guardian, a mobile ranger, whatever. Chaos Storm, the ONE aoe the class has that's not target restricted isn't exclusive in this.

They have no idea what they even want Phantasms to do. Most of the traits don't even fucking work (Fury, Haste, Retal, and the lags from Regen except on Duellist...?). Stop using your "I can kill bads so easily, the class needs nerfs" as justification for these nerfs (which only make it harder on Mesmers) but do nothing to fix the issues people are having with the class or even why people are having trouble against Mesmers in the first place.

Zito... you just cease to disappoint me with your nearsightedness, the staff nerf (although saddening) is kinda needed, the fact i can throw down chaos storms in the middle of a cap point in PvP and be able to keep any bunker off there and eventually cap it from underneath them is kinda ridiculous...

Any bunker? Sorry chaos storm does not have the radius of a cap point, a person can easily dodge out of the storm and step on the edge and still cap or prevent capping. What do guardians have? I'm sure all the time you spend in PvP you notice what defensive guardians can do at the clocktower and prevent you from capping. It is down right annoying. Does that get nerfed? No.

Phantasms are not amazingly powerful. If anyone had half a brain in PvP they would notice all you had to do to kill a phantasms was target it, release one fireball, and re target your target or better yet, place an aoe (which mesmers lack direct aoe) and not worry about phantasms. They have horrible survival and phantasms is where all our damage comes from. Yet a kittening theif gets 10k damage wraped up in one attack and he doesn't have to worry about his attacking dying because oh look the attack is coming from him. Did theives get nerfed? Yea 15% is hardly a nerf, it's only to one skill and it still hits like a kitten truck it did nothing more then shave 1k damage off of it. Dagger and pistol damage still remains OP which is the reason why you see theives do nothing but glass cannon.

So now that after 2 seconds you summon your phantasms is dead you have to wait 20 seconds before you can summon another. Not to mention waiting for phantasms attack recharge is better then shattering them making shattering useless.

Sorry staff did not deserve this nerf neither did phantasms, when are 50 bugs are fixed yea maybe they would end up too strong but sorry it is absolute crap we got nerfed for bads whining.

Well seeing as how you 2 have piss poor phantasm defense i'm going to have to say toughness scales incredibly well on phantasms! I have 3k armor on my mesmer about 1.5k con damage, and then a handful of healing, and my clones never really die.. ESPECIALLY phantasms, it tends to be i shatter them long before i destroy them, but then again i don't rely on them for my entire damage output so that my be different...

And you can even ask larynx, he's given up on killing my illusions because it's just not getting anywhere and the punishment for killing them (cripple and random con) isn't worth the time, and the fact i'll pull another one up about as quickly as the first died, if not faster.

@Kel, didn't really say they nerfed staff in the second paragraph, although yeah it kinda was nerfed 2 skills got upped CD (granted i see that as fairly needed)

@Zito well you seem to be a champion among champions if you think thief is OP because you get stuck in their pistol whip, that's like saying "Warriors are OP because their 1 hundred blades kills me!" it's the same concept, they're one trick ponies no more no less. And for the chaos storm comment, one chaos storm on a point is enough to make everyone scatter seeing as how that thing dazes a lot, as well as reducing their heal, weakening their attacks, and chilling them, and you'd be surprised how many people just say "Fuck the point!" and flee for their lives when they're hit with a 4 second daze followed up with 16 stacks of confusion and random other conditions.

Originally Posted by draykorinee

Youre in the mmo forums and you find mmos boring, Im heading on over to the twilight forums to add my unecessary and shallow 2 cents.

Well seeing as how you 2 have piss poor phantasm defense i'm going to have to say toughness scales incredibly well on phantasms! I have 3k armor on my mesmer about 1.5k con damage, and then a handful of healing, and my clones never really die.. ESPECIALLY phantasms, it tends to be i shatter them long before i destroy them, but then again i don't rely on them for my entire damage output so that my be different...

And you can even ask larynx, he's given up on killing my illusions because it's just not getting anywhere and the punishment for killing them (cripple and random con) isn't worth the time, and the fact i'll pull another one up about as quickly as the first died, if not faster.

@Kel, didn't really say they nerfed staff in the second paragraph, although yeah it kinda was nerfed 2 skills got upped CD (granted i see that as fairly needed)

@Zito well you seem to be a champion among champions if you think thief is OP because you get stuck in their pistol whip, that's like saying "Warriors are OP because their 1 hundred blades kills me!" it's the same concept, they're one trick ponies no more no less. And for the chaos storm comment, one chaos storm on a point is enough to make everyone scatter seeing as how that thing dazes a lot, as well as reducing their heal, weakening their attacks, and chilling them, and you'd be surprised how many people just say "Fuck the point!" and flee for their lives when they're hit with a 4 second daze followed up with 16 stacks of confusion and random other conditions.

You should stop over exaggerating chaos storm. You honestly think I stand in warriors 100 blades and theives pistol whip?Pistol whip isn't the only thing that constantly hits for 10k from a theif fyi. Maybe if you stop over exagerting and stop fighting bads you can see whats going on. Phantasms don't scale well with armor, both Kel and I stack toughness out of our asses I don't know what proffesion you are playing but its obviously not the same.